Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
November 1998
All the stations consist of automated machines which perform the operations. You may
purchase additional machines during the assignment. Board Stuffing machines cost
$90,000, testers cost $80,000, and tuning machines cost $100,000. You can also sell any
machine at a retirement price of $10,000, provided there is at least one other machine left
at that station. The operators are paid a fixed salary, and increasing the number of
machines at a station does not require any increase in the number of operators.
Written by Sunil Kumar and Samuel C. Wood, both Assistant Professors at the Stanford University Graduate
School of Business. Copyright 1998. No part of this document may be reproduced without permission from
Responsive Learning Technologies, Inc., at info@responsive.net.
Orders arrive randomly at the factory. Each order is for 60 receivers. When an order
arrives it is matched up with 60 raw kits and becomes a manufacturing lot. If an order
arrives and there are less than 60 raw kits in the materials buffer, the order waits in the
customer order queue pending arrival of raw kits. In addition, orders are not accepted if
the total number of orders in the system (waiting for kits or in process) exceeds 100. If it is
allowed in the assignment, the 60 kits may be sub-divided into several manufacturing lots
just prior to entering the factory. Processing a lot on each machine entails performing a
setup on the machine, processing each kit in the lot (one at a time), and then sending the
completed lot on to the next station. Once all the receivers in an order are completed, the
order is shipped immediately. A job is not shipped to its customer until all of the lots in the
job are completed.
Raw kits are purchased from a single supplier and cost $10 per kit ($600 per order). There
is also a fixed cost of $1000 per shipment of raw kits, independent of the shipment size.
The supplier requires four days to ship any quantity of raw kits. An order for new raw kits
is placed with the supplier when the following three criteria are met: (1) the inventory of
raw kits is less than the material reorder point, (2) there are no orders for raw kits currently
outstanding, and (3) the factory has sufficient cash to purchase the specified order quantity. If it is allowed in the assignment, you may set the reorder point and order quantity
independently to any multiple of 60 kits, as long as that multiple is greater than zero.
The current pricing contract is as follows. An order does not leave the factory until all 60
kits in the order are completed. A customer order filled within the quoted lead time of 24
hours earns $1000. If an order is still in the factory 24 hours after it arrived, then a lateness
penalty is incurred. Specifically, the total revenue for an order linearly decreases from
$1000 for a 24-hour lead time to $0 for the maximum lead time of 72 hours. Orders that
take longer than 72 hours to fill generate no revenue at all. If it is allowed in the assignment, you may select from a menu of other contracts for future orders. More lucrative contracts will have shorter quoted lead times and shorter maximum lead times.
You will have some cash on hand when the assignment begins. This amount is depleted by
buying machines as well as by buying raw kits from the supplier. The revenue earned from
filled orders increases the cash balance. The balance earns interest (compounded every
simulated day) at a compounded rate of 10% per year. There are no taxes. All fixed overhead over which you have no control, such as salaries, rent, utilities, etc. are ignored. To
reduce the chance of bankruptcy, you are not allowed to purchase a machine if the resulting cash balance would be too low to purchase an order of raw materials at the current
order quantity.
The winning team is the team with the most cash at the end of the game. You can
compare the cash status of your team to other teams by clicking on the Overall Standing
button on the bottom of the web page.
On the registration page, you will first have to enter the code given in class. Once you
have entered the code, you will be asked for the team name and the password that you
came up with. Finally, you will be asked for the names of each of the team members. After
you submit this information from the web page, your team will be registered. Later, if you
decide to change you team name, password, or members before the assignment begins,
you can simply return to the registration page, enter the same team name and password
you entered the first time, and then make your changes. To completely remove your team,
delete all of the team membersnames and save the resulting team. You will not be able to
make any changes to your team after the assignment begins.
from any Netscape Navigator 3.0 or later browser, or any Internet Explorer 3.0 or later
browser. The following instructions apply to Netscape 3. If you use a different browser,
you should take equivalent actions.
You should enable Java and Javascript on your browser. To do this on Netscape 3,
select Network Preferences under the Options menu of Netscape, choose Languages,
and check Enable Java and Enable Javascript.
To be able to download data from graphs later, you should select General Preferences
under the Options menu of Netscape 3. Then choose the Helpers menu and choose Save
to Disk as the action for text/plain. This will save data you download from the web page
as a text file, which you can then open using Microsoft Excel.
INFORMATION AVAILABLE
Number of new customer orders by day
Average number of orders waiting for kits by day
Current pricing contract for arriving orders
Lot size
Materials Buffer:
Average number of kits (raw materials) in the buffer by day
Station Queues:
Average number of receivers in process waiting while all the
machines in the station are busy, by day
Stations:
Completed Jobs:
Clicking on the above icons will also enable you to change certain features of the factory
such as the number of machines in a station. Assignment handouts will explain which features you can change.
Sources and uses of cash can be obtained by clicking on the cash button on the web page.
Sources of cash are revenue, money raised from the sale of machines, and interest. Uses of
cash are raw material (kit) purchases and the purchase of additional machines. Finally,
you can check the overall standing of your team using the overall standing button.